COT – Common OVF Tool

…this article should have been published at 2017-11-23, i forgot to press the right botton.

So, an update might be needed, anyone still interested in cot today?

Release 2.1 (2018-01-29) is the current release, containing some fixes (https://github.com/glennmatthews/cot/blob/master/CHANGELOG.rst)

• COT installation using PIP

So, let’s go, following

administrator@lx-ubuntu:~$ sudo pip install cot
sudo: pip: command not found

thats embarassing.

Install PIP first

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install python-pip

$ pip --version
pip 9.0.1 from /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages (python 2.7)

Try it again

$ sudo pip install cot
...
Successfully installed backports.shutil-get-terminal-size-1.0.0 colorlog-3.1.4 cot-2.1.0 ndg-httpsclient-0.5.1 pyvmomi-6.7.0.2018.9 verboselogs-1.7

$ cot --version
Common OVF Tool (COT), version 2.1.0
Copyright (C) 2013-2017 the COT project developers.

• Optional: Argument-Completion

Not essential, but handy.

$sudo pip install argcomplete
...
Successfully installed argcomplete-1.9.4

• COT helpers

A full installation requires so called „cot-helpers“ to use all features.

$ cot install-helpers --verify-only
Results:
-------------
COT manpages: DIRECTORY NOT FOUND: /usr/local/man/man1
fatdisk:      NOT FOUND
mkisofs:      NOT FOUND
ovftool:      NOT FOUND
qemu-img:     NOT FOUND
vmdktool:     NOT FOUND

$ sudo apt-get install xutils-dev
...
Setting up xutils-dev (1:7.7+5ubuntu1) ...

$ sudo cot install-helpers
...
Results:
-------------
COT manpages: already installed, no updates needed
fatdisk:      INSTALLATION FAILED: [Errno 1] Helper program './RUNME' exited with error 1
mkisofs:      version 2.1, present at /usr/bin/mkisofs
ovftool:      INSTALLATION FAILED: No support for automated installation of ovftool, as VMware requires a site login to
              download it. See https://www.vmware.com/support/developer/ovf/
qemu-img:     version 2.11.1, present at /usr/bin/qemu-img
vmdktool:     version 1.4, present at /usr/local/bin/vmdktool

[Errno 1] Unable to install some helpers

first fix „fatdisk“ which is used to inject configs into OVA-Files

$ sudo cp /usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/bits/stdint-intn.h /usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/bits/stdint-intn.h.bak
$ sudo vi /usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/bits/stdint-intn.h

uncomment

 typedef __int64_t int64_t;

to

//typedef __int64_t int64_t;

and run the helper-installation again:

$ sudo cot install-helpers
...
NOTICE  : Successfully installed 'fatdisk'
Results:
-------------
COT manpages: already installed, no updates needed
fatdisk:      successfully installed to /usr/local/bin/fatdisk, version 1.0
mkisofs:      version 2.1, present at /usr/bin/mkisofs
ovftool:      INSTALLATION FAILED: No support for automated installation of ovftool, as VMware requires a site login to
              download it. See https://www.vmware.com/support/developer/ovf/
qemu-img:     version 2.11.1, present at /usr/bin/qemu-img
vmdktool:     version 1.4, present at /usr/local/bin/vmdktool

[Errno 1] Unable to install some helpers

But it threw a lot of warnings..
warning: format ‘%lu’ expects argument of type ‘long unsigned int’, but argument 3 has type ‘int64_t {aka long long int}’ [-Wformat=]
… but it compiles… Memo: Try manual compilation…

$ mkdir fatdisk
$ cd fatdisk
$ wget -O fatdisk.tgz https://github.com/goblinhack/fatdisk/archive/master.tar.gz
$ tar zxf fatdisk.tgz
$ cd fatdisk-master/
$ ./RUNME

OFVTool of course has to be installed manually
Downlaod from VMware: OVFTOOL-Downlaod

Upload to the Linux-Server using Putty-SCP(PSCP) and public-key-authentication:

C:\Downloads>pscp -scp -i C:\rh.priv.ppk VMware-ovftool-4.3.0-7948156-lin.x86_64.bundle administrator@192.168.56.101:
VMware-ovftool-4.3.0-7948 | 35623 kB | 35623.9 kB/s | ETA: 00:00:00 | 100%

At the Linux-Server

$ ls -l
total 35644
-rw-r--r-- 1 administrator administrator 36478864 Oct 15 18:36 VMware-ovftool-4.3.0-7948156-lin.x86_64.bundle

$ chmod a+x VMware-ovftool-4.3.0-7948156-lin.x86_64.bundle
$ sudo ./VMware-ovftool-4.3.0-7948156-lin.x86_64.bundle
...
Installing VMware OVF Tool component for Linux 4.3.0
    Configuring...
[######################################################################] 100%
Installation was successful.

administrator@lx-ubuntu:~$ cot install-helpers --verify-only
Results:
-------------
COT manpages: already installed, no updates needed
fatdisk:      version 1.0, present at /usr/local/bin/fatdisk
mkisofs:      version 2.1, present at /usr/bin/mkisofs
ovftool:      version 4.3, present at /usr/bin/ovftool
qemu-img:     version 2.11.1, present at /usr/bin/qemu-img
vmdktool:     version 1.4, present at /usr/local/bin/vmdktool